In conclusion, we compare Rio’s streets with those created in Brasilia to solve, through planning, the automobile’s chaos. Modernism sought to essentially eliminate the traditional, multi-use street, to divide traffic from all the other uses of public space, but with mixed results of its own. We take Rio’s streets up to the present by examining contemporary trends. First, we look at formal and informal cases in which residents have recaptured the city streets, banning automobiles either permanently or periodically, to enjoy the streets again for recreation, celebration, and shopping. Pedestrian districts have expanded, and street carnival is making a pronounced comeback. In a countervailing trend, Brazil’s upper classes have built gated communities, sprawling, walled neighborhoods in which the streets have all been privatized, a final enclosure and end of urban public commons. We ask what lessons history holds for the ongoing conflicts over public spaces and how they might best be used to build contemporary communities.